Sonnet 12: When I Do Count the Clock That Tells the Time
Sonnet 12: When I Do Count the Clock That Tells the Time - form Summary
Volta at the Ninth Line
This is a Shakespearean sonnet using three quatrains and a closing couplet. The octave-like first eight lines catalogue seasonal and bodily decline under Time’s power. At the volta (line nine) the poem shifts from observation to address and argument: all beauty fades, so the couplet proposes a single defense—"breed"—urging procreation as a practical means to outlast Time. The tight form concentrates the moral and rhetorical turn.
Read Complete AnalysesWhen I do count the clock that tells the time, And see the brave day sunk in hideous night; When I behold the violet past prime, And sable curls all silvered o’er with white; When lofty trees I see barren of leaves Which erst from heat did canopy the herd, And summer’s green all girded up in sheaves Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard, Then of thy beauty do I question make That thou among the wastes of time must go, Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake And die as fast as they see others grow; And nothing ‘gainst Time’s scythe can make defence Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.
Feel free to be first to leave comment.